Posted on June 23, 2020 by AdminUN

SHOULD BAR CHARGES BE FILED AGAINST ABBOTT & KIKO?

Lawyers like Jim Abbott and Colleen Kiko, Trump’s appointees to the FLRA, take a bar association oath to live by a higher than normal ethical standards.  They swear not to deceive, misrepresent, or commit a fraud, among other things. Lawyers have been tossed out of  bar associations just for making false statements on driver license applications.  Yet, back in 2018 these two self-proclaimed legal purists, decided to manipulate the wording of a Supreme Court decision they quoted in a FLRA ruling they wrote.  The decision was to reduce the right of unions to negotiate over mid-term changes.  How?  Well, imagine if somewhere on his trip down Mount Sinai Moses stopped to modify the ten commandments by using an ellipsis (those three dots that signal something has been omitted …) to delete just a word or two.  If he used the ellipsis the way Abbott and Kiko did we could now be living under the following commandments, “Thou shalt …commit adultery,” “Thou shalt … steal” and “Thou shalt … kill.”  The Abbott and Kiko ellipsis did not just slightly alter the meaning of the High Court’s decision; it altered it 180 degrees to support precisely the point these two thugs were trying to make. The question is whether practitioners should just give these two a pass or pursue the matter to the point where they may lose their law licenses.  Here is the logic of the draft charges we have seen. Continue reading →

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Posted on June 22, 2020 by AdminUN

UNION REP TEST #8  (Part 1) – Prohibited Personnel Practices (PPPs)

Although union reps are much more likely to encounter agency actions violating provisions of a labor agreement or federal regulations, there are situations where one of these 14 statutory prohibitions arises.  So, it helps to have at least a passing understanding of them. The 14 individual PPPs are listed below followed by a factual situation.  See if you can figure out if the PPP has been violated in the noted situation or not.  The answer follows each situation. Continue reading →

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Posted on June 17, 2020 by AdminUN

TAXES ON SICK LEAVE DONATIONS

The bloggers at “Benefits Law Advisor” just posted some information from IRS entitled, “IRS Provides Guidance On Employer Leave-Based Donation Programs That Aid Victims Of The COVID-19 Pandemic.” Check it out.  It is short and helpful

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Posted on June 16, 2020 by AdminUN

“CONDITIONS OF EMPLOYMENT” (CoE) V. “WORKING CONDITIONS (WC).” WHY BOTHER?

When first we read AFGE and DHS, CBP, 70 FLRA 501 (2018) we were left wondering why Abbott and Kiko were trying so hard to justify another exception to a union’s right to bargain over midterm changes.  You may remember that case held unions only had the right to bargain before the change was implemented if it changed CoE, but not if it only changed WC. This was so important that the two Trumpettes opened themselves to bar charges by deceitfully manipulating a quote to make it seem as if the High Court agreed with their view—when in reality the Court held precisely the opposite according to a unanimous decision of three federal appellate judges.  That is a lot to risk when what Abbott and Kiko were trying to do looked like it could already be accomplished by an agency claiming the change was de minimis. There is 16 years of case law holding that is a legitimate exception to the right to bargain and providing practitioners solid examples and criteria for applying the exception.  But then it came to us what all this deceit and obfuscation was really about? Continue reading →

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Posted on June 16, 2020 by AdminUN

A NEGOTIATOR’S CASE STUDY

Just passing along a tip to other lifetime union negotiators.  Check out “Will There Be a 2020 Season” from yahoo.com. It tells an interesting tale of how the professional baseball players have boxed in the owners with potential ULP claims despite the owners’ greater wealth and bargaining power. Fed unions can do the same if they know the case law.

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Posted on June 12, 2020 by AdminUN

WILL THESE FED UNIONS STAND AGAINST THE CONFEDERACY? 

There is a lot of passion right now on changing the names of those military installations named after confederate leaders.  But we have yet to hear from the unions that represent employees at these installations.  Their voices are particularly important for a few reasons.  First, they would represent the local residents rather than far away media, politicians and social activists.  Second, military protocol prevents the uniformed employees from speaking out as a group on the issue, leaving the civilian work force as the next best surrogate spokespersons. Third, if unions truly believe they are in business to promote the dignity of people then there is no better example of an institution that debased people. Fourth, there is a great alternative source of names for these installations that would actually boost the dignity of the bases. Here is a list of those installations where unions should be moving aggressively for name changes: 

  • Fort A.P. Hill – Virginia 
  • Camp Beauregard – Louisiana 
  • Fort Benning – Georgia 
  • Fort Bragg – North Carolina 
  • Fort Gordon – Georgia 
  • Fort Hood – Texas 
  • Fort Lee – Virginia 
  • Fort Pickett – Virginia 
  • Fort Rucker—Alabama 
  • Fort Polk –Louisiana 

But here is the soul crushing reason why unions must stand up and fight for these name changes—or admit they are pretenders in the fight for human dignity.  Continue reading →

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Posted on June 10, 2020 by AdminUN

ABBOTT & KIKO PANTSED

The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals just pantsed the two Trumpian toadies by not just overturning their decision in AFGE v. FLRA, Civ. No. 19-1069 (6/9/20), but also engaging in what amounts to a  public disrobing by a federal judicial panel. The three judges unanimously stripped the Abbott & Kiko decision for all to see that the two Trumpettes not only lacked elementary legal writing skills, but also even minimal legal integrity.  This is the FLRA decision that held–over Dubester’s strong and wise objection– that while unions were entitled to negotiate over changes in “conditions of employment,” they could not bargain changes in “working conditions.” Given the distinction between the two terms was and is vague, you would have thought Donald’s dupes would have explained to agencies how to practically distinguish between the two. But as the court pointed out “…the Authority fails to explain the differences between the terms or how the alleged differences matter….”  What Abbott & Kiko did is like a grammar school student tasked with homework to explain the difference between a coat and a jacket and simply turning in a paper declaring that they are different because the letters in the two words are mostly different.  But the Abbott-Kiko blunders did not stop there as the court went on to write that – Continue reading →

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Posted on June 8, 2020 by AdminUN

CORE UNIONS LIST DEMANDS TO RETURN TO OFFICE

Twenty-four (24) unions that form the core of the federal employee labor movement as members of the Federal Workers Alliance, composed of unions in and outside of the AFL-CIO, have listed for the Administration the 11 working conditions that must be provided  for their members to return to federal office space.  They 11 are listed below along with the names of the unions that are working together on this. It is unlikely that the agencies, much less the political administration, will agree simply because the Alliance said these are the conditions.  Unions have a struggle ahead of them which will require that they use all the tools available to them to achieve these goals.  For example, demanding to bargain over the issues that are negotiable, helping high risk employees file FMLA and Reasonable Accommodation requests—and grieve if necessary, publicizing through picketing that the building is unsafe, enlisting the help of local Congressional reps and media, etc. At a minimum, unions need to notify unit employees what the agency should be doing to protect them and asking for their support. Continue reading →

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Posted on June 8, 2020 by AdminUN

IRS FOOLISHLY BARRED FROM PURSUING RICH TAX CHEATS

Tax cheats are important to union officials because their theft is one of the major reasons feds do not get proper annual pay increases or enough staffing to do the job. The Dept. of Treasury has reported that 879,415 “high income” Americans did not even file tax returns recently, costing the government $45.7 billion in taxes. The reason this happen is that IRS’ staff has been systematically reduced by those in Congress who consider it their primary duty to take care of the rich beyond excessive direct tax cuts.  For example, in 1995 IRS had 113,643 employees to tend to the filings from 265 million citizens.  But after a lot of rhetoric attacking IRS without a single proven allegation of wrongdoing, Congress has reduced the IRS staff over two decades to 73,519 in 2018 despite the population having grown by 62 million Americans. These fictitious attacks on IRS were led by Sen. Roth, (Rep. DE) and Congressman Darrell Issa, (Rep. CA).  In a perfect world, all unions would ban together with other organizations hurt by this theft to insist that Congress restore IRS funding.  Not only would that slash tax cheating by the rich who do not even bother to file returns, but it would also boost funding for the many federal programs that help the people at the income levels of their union members. Unions are not going to get this problem fixed if they continue to do in the future what they have done in the past. Someone needs to make forming a large alliance for change a passionate project.

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Posted on June 1, 2020 by AdminUN

UNION REP TEST #7 (Probationary Employee Rights)

Newly hired probationary employees sometimes decide not to join the union because they think it cannot do a thing for them if they are fired.  They could not be more wrong about that. Test your own knowledge of all the appeal routes available to probationers to challenge a dismissal.  Read through the list below and mark whether probationers can appeal to a neutral outside the agency in that situation or not. The answer are at the end of the test situations. Continue reading →

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